Voice as Movement (in-progress)

FOR MEZZO-SOPRANO, VIOLIN, CELLO, AND ELECTRONICS

Music by Samuel Beebe.

“Just as silence is the ground of all sound, so stillness is the ground of all movement…”

Voice as Movement: Stock-Still is part of an ongoing collaboration between mezzo-soprano Natasha Nelson and composer Samuel Beebe to create a score for a new work that integrates elements of opera and dance, intended as a dialogue between sound and movement, designed to explore how the extension of sound into movement can alter an audience’s perception of the work and can activate a space differently than with sound alone.

The score calls for the ensemble to be amplified, not only to boost the overall dynamic level of the group, but also to allow for simple live electronic processing techniques; namely, delay and reverb.  These effects augment the live performance, complicating rhythmic textures and creating space. Instead of literal text, each phrase of the electrified vocal part is abstracted into varying combinations of consonant and vowel sounds, resulting in a wide variety of tone colors and timbral qualities traversed in this winding, reflective vocalise. 

Natasha Nelson, mezzo-soprano
Stephanie Liu, violin
Stephen Moran, cello
Samuel Beebe, electronics